


Too Many Miles On My Bones

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Mild Smut, Post-Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, Season/Series 09, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 14:38:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5378780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They both remember, in different ways. A post-Hell Bent fic encompassing all of series 9.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Many Miles On My Bones

**Author's Note:**

> This fic covers the entirety of series 9 in various ways, including Last Christmas. It's weird. I'm sorry. But I had a lot of feelings. I hope the time jumps aren't too hard to understand.

It starts like it ends.

Time is funny that way, especially at the end of everything.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I remember, you know,” Clara says, days after Christmas and a New Year’s spent ringing in the year two hundred thousand and fifteen. "All sixty-two years."

He took her to a planet that had vertical rings that arced across the horizon like a rainbow. At midnight, Earth time, a meteor shower streaked colors through the sky she didn't have names for, because she told him she wanted to be anywhere but Earth.

The Doctor stops and looks up from where he’s fiddling with an oversized screwdriver, of the non-sonic variety, and a box that looks like an old transistor radio.

"Me too," he replies.

It’s simple. It’s what she expects to hear. But the truth is, as it always is, more complicated.

He remembers the time with her and without her, the watching and waiting. He also remembers what’s coming, and how powerless he will be to stop it. That too, is as it always is. They won’t talk about it, though, the missing years or the inevitable or even why he finally changed out of the holey jumper after six days of insisting there was _nothing_ wrong with it and _no_ , it was _not_ the least bit dirty _or_ smelly.

Later, Clara is sitting in the library, curled into the corner of the sofa with a soft throw blanket, staring down at a book open on her lap that she isn’t reading. The Doctor finds her there and sits down at the other end of the sofa with a slight clearing of his throat. She doesn’t look up.

They’re quiet, until she sighs.

She sets the book aside, her hands twisting in her lap. She rubs her thumb over her knuckles, finding the smooth unwrinkled skin strange.

“You’re worried,” he says, and she startles a bit. He looks up and then over at her, his expression expectant but reserved.

Clara shakes her head. “What?”

“I just thought -” He shrugs. “ _Are_ you worried?”

She frowns. “No, why would I be? Everything is fine.” She smiles at him but he doesn’t smile back, just looks at her with his eyebrows doing that _thing_ where he looks a grumpy owl. She looks around, listens to the gentle hum of the TARDIS, the odd buzzing sound of the time vortex.

“It is fine, isn’t it, Doctor?” She gives him a look and he swallows and stands up abruptly.

“ _Doctor_ , answer me,” she demands, standing and moving behind him. “I’m not worried, but if _you’re_ worried, then _I’m_ worried, and if you’re worried you need to tell me why _right_ now.”

He spins and hesitates, his mouth opening and closing, hands pressed together in front of him. Then he shifts again, his expression and stance changing again. He holds her by the shoulders and smiles crookedly.

“Oh, Clara,” he replies, shaking his head. “You’ve been around me too long.”

She smiles and shakes her head in confusion, waiting for him to say something more, something that explains, but instead he just steps closer. She has to tip her head up to see him properly, and there is a look that is both familiar and not. It will never stop being strange that he is and isn’t always the same man, that there are things she will always recognize.

She wants to remind him that she’s _alive_ , that she’s _here_ , as if that will move them forward. But she doesn’t, and he leans in, slowly so she has a chance to stop him. She thinks maybe he wants her to.

There’s a touch.

And then another, and then his lips shy against hers, closed and thin and warm. Her hand comes up to rest on his chest, the other seeking the hand that clenches at his side. Her fingers curl in the lapel of his coat at the same time something unravels in her gut. It sits heavy as she opens to taste him, and when he sighs into her mouth and does the same she thinks _finally_.

She doesn’t realize his fingers are in her hair until she pulls away, and when she glances up his eyes are closed, his face slack. She licks her lips and smiles as his eyes blink open.

“Definitely too long,” he mutters.

He smiles a little, but it’s tight and closed off. She isn’t at all surprised when his hand slides from her hair hastily, repositioning in his pocket as he steps around her and leaves.

She sits back down on the sofa, staring at the fire with her heart racing and something pulling at her insides. She touches her fingertips to her lips and closes her eyes, breathing until she feels in control again.

In a moment, she’ll smile too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

After two thousand years, even a Time Lord gets tired.

He’s lost her seven times so far.

Robin Hood. A mummy that wasn’t. The Master, twice. Daleks, also twice. The Mire. And now -

He doesn’t know how to keep it in anymore. Everything he’d said in that barn was the bared and bloody truth, rent from the depths of his soul, from the place between his hearts where he keeps them all, before he could stop it. He’s known since the moment he met her, when his face was younger, but his hair just as unruly, that he’d lose her too someday.

He loses them all.

And now there is nothing. On the console display, the navigation system, and the view out of the TARDIS doors, all nothing.

He should have known, really, after all lying is Missy - no, the _Master’s_ \- specialty. Lying with a side order of manipulation, and covered in a heap of insanity. But he always, for a moment, lets himself believe. He wants to think that maybe all those years, those millennia between them mean something.

His knuckles are still smarting, and the holographic recorder controls are going to be dodgy for a while, but it’s the first time in ages he’s felt anything. The first time since Clara left.

And that’s the thing isn’t it?

The thing the Master never understood, the thing _they_ never understood even while they were experiencing all of time and space. The thing he never did either, not really, not until this moment, this street corner at two in the morning. He is watching other people, other lives, ones he can never have, come and go and live and remain utterly unaware of how the Earth churns and swirls beneath their feet.

He thinks of them all. Susan and Sarah Jane. Lelah, Harry, and Adric. Donna. Martha. Rose.

 _Clara_.

Clara, Clara, Clara.

He lands right where he left, but a bit earlier, and she steps out just then, into the light rain and the glow of the lamppost. She looks in his direction, leaning out into the street to hail a cab. She’s so young, so unhindered and free. She doesn’t know yet.

Yes, that _is_ the thing.

He sighs and closes the doors as she ducks into a taxi.

It was never him making them special.

 _They_ make _him_ special.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It takes her a while, weeks maybe, but eventually she gets used to the idea of the Doctor not existing. She doesn’t think about why it was harder than forgetting Danny. The Doctor’s gone home and she’s happy about that, really, it’s what he’s always wanted, even when all he was doing was running as far away from home as he could get.

There _is_ nothing. There has _been_ nothing.

Her life is teaching and coming home, sleeping and waking up.

This is not happening.

She doesn’t believe anymore, not in fairy tales, not in heroes, not in the Doctor, but he is right there in front of her, pleading with her to listen to him, to get in the TARDIS. She reaches for him on impulse, and the feel of his coat as she curls her fingers around his slender wrist is too real.

He keeps moving. His feet shift back and forth so he doesn’t stand too close to her. His hands busy themselves with knobs and levers and buttons so he doesn’t reach for her. His mind works through fourteenth degree Hyraxian equations so he doesn’t think about how she’s standing in his TARDIS again in her pajamas and a robe and fuzzy slippers.

And then she’s there, right beside him and too close, too real. He stops and so does everything else. Her hand curls around three of his fingers, still cold from being outside and it’s enough of a distraction that he wants to stay in this moment for years. She pulls gently and he turns, looking down at her. He feels the heaviness of her gaze, unreadable, but soft. Her eyes are wide and shining, questioning too, picking him apart bit by bit, second by second. He begged her once to see him, and now she does, every atom of him it feels like.

His hearts beat three times and then he looks away. Her hand falls.

There’s a crazy man posing as Santa and something evil and alien to tend to, but there’s also Clara.

It’s never really been a question of where his priorities lie.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Smile for me,” he begs, his eyes bright with tears, red rimmed and hollow. “Go on…, Clara Oswald.”

The sound of her name is like a knife in her heart. Her heart that no longer beats. It should be her.

It’s not fair.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She dreams.

She wakes.

She dreams she is dreaming about dreaming.

Danny Pink is alive, and something about that feels wrong to her, makes her skin itch. It’s familiar, almost too much so, and there might be something she’s supposed to forget that’s she’s forgotten about already.

“Clara?” Danny says, smiling in his confusion. “What are you doing in the kitchen? We have to leave now.”

“No,” she replies. She’s staring out the window into the garden, their garden, the garden that she knows they don’t - or shouldn’t - have. “You're not supposed to be here.”

“What?” He follows her gaze out the window like he hopes something out there will explain why she’s acting so strange, and then he looks back to her. “Of course I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

 _Dying_.

The word is in her head, in front of her eyes. She blinks and everything feels cold, freezing, and there’s the odd sensation of snowflakes touching her cheeks. She takes a breath and it feels strange, like the expansion of her lungs, the need for oxygen is somehow also wrong. Her eyes close and she listens for a moment to the sound of nothing.

She can’t hear her heartbeat.

She looks up. Danny’s here, looking at her, smiling and wondering and waiting.

“Clara?”

It’s not Danny’s voice.

Something is wrong.

There’s a bird, a raven, in her dreams of dreams. Sometimes it’s just perched nearby, cawing at her sharply like a warning. It’s coming, it says, it’s coming, the words appearing in her head. Its head tilts and she can feel eyes on her, not just the raven’s, but many, like the entire universe is watching her. Other times, it follows her, swoops down from on high and chases her through the empty streets of London. Always just behind her, just over her shoulder.

Once, just once, it catches her. She turns around and screams, the same pitch and tone as the screech of the raven, and then -

More nothing.

She stands there on an empty street, the sky a strange hazy gray. It’s still wrong. It’s even _more_ wrong, if that’s possible. It comes at her again and again, beak open, talons forward, screaming like death itself follows behind. She stands there, arms flung wide, waiting.

The raven turns to smoke.

She wakes again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The boy is a surprise.

He has that moment where he’s torn between what he wants to do, what he needs to do, and what he _should_ do. They are his mortal enemies after all. Well, one of them. He has a lot of those, collects them really.

In the end, the Doctor does what he was always _supposed_ to do, and it all remains the same. No harm, no foul. Up and on to the next adventure.

And then he dies.

He’s a ghost too.

It doesn’t happen often, so he likes to take advantage of it when it does. The worst part is leaving Clara behind. But he hasn’t regenerated so he figures he just needs to find the way around the obvious, which is pretty much his specialty at this point. And he does, of course he does, never mind that creeping, unsettled feeling in his stomach. The side effects of a paradox are never comfortable, but he has her back and he’d suffer a thousand other feelings and pain for that.

In the TARDIS, she leans against the railing and there’s a smile and something akin to amusement in the way she looks at him. He catches her gaze and holds it, his throat warm and tight as he strides forward. Her cheeks flush when he stops and whatever bravery he had crumbles as he turns and moves around the console.

Much later he’ll find her wandering the halls, the TARDIS apparently having moved her room again.

His hands are at her waist, against his better judgement, and she’s flushed, her breath catching. She waits and he likes that, likes the hovering, the anticipation, the way everything stops moving for just a second like it never has before. Her back hits the wall and she lets out a little _oof_ sound, but her hands are on his jumper, pulling and keeping him close.

He dips his head as she tips hers up, and she can feel her heart racing. His fingers dig into her hip as the other hand braces against the wall. Then he pulls back, mouth open like he’s going to ruin it with words so she does it first.

“Don’t say anything.”

He sighs and it’s entirely too intimate for someone like her, but sometimes she likes to let herself be carried into moments.

There’s a bed, she doesn’t know who’s, or if it even matters, wood and iron with blue sheets. Her ears are ringing, buzzing, and she feels him smile into her skin when he says her name. It feels like an apology, and a knot tightens in her stomach.

Their fingers tangle together over the sheets, and she tugs until he turns over enough that she can straddle his hips. Her hair slips from behind her ear, brushing past her jaw, curtaining around his face and tickling his shoulders. His hand pushes it back again, curving behind her head to pull her the rest of the way down.

Her mouth opens, her eyes close, and his hand is at the small of her back, fingertips drumming along her spine. She tastes the odd warmth of his mouth, not cold at all like his skin, slow and lazy. This intimacy is a quiet thing, different for them, and she knows this should mean some kind of change.

His fingers squeeze and pull at her hips, her nails dig into his chest, his shoulders, and after, neither of them leaves.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She dies.

She dies and he’s not ready for that, for the suddenness with which everything stops again.

He kisses the back of her hand again as he kneels next to the cot in the back of the little house. She’s still warm and the tips of her fingers smell like coffee. She’d spilled it on the counter in her kitchen this morning, or was it yesterday? Well, he was in a hurry and she was insisting.

He’s not looking at her. Won’t. His head dips to stare down at his shoes as he presses her knuckles into his cheek.

 _I’m sorry_ , he thinks.

Somewhere, he hears, _you don’t have to lie_.

He sets her hand on her stomach, folds it gently over the other before he rises. He tugs his jacket to straighten it, pulls the cuffs of his shirt, and then squares his shoulders as he turns to leave.

There’s a fate to meet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Blood on his knuckles.

Skull on the floor.

 _Bird_.

Time moves forward, but he does not.

He could end this with a word, with the truth, a breath and an admission. But she’d still be dead.

_“I’m tired.”_

_He was flipping and pushing, turning a dial or three. She was scowling at him from across the room. How was he supposed to know it was the muddy season?_

_“No, you’re angry. Why?”_

The words on the chalkboard might be hers or his, it doesn’t matter. Right now they are the same. Too much the same in hindsight, and it’s that always a bitch.

_“It’s not your fault.”_

_He scoffed._

_“No? That’s not what you usually say.”_

_Her fingers curled around his wrist and tugged gently._

_“Come on. Shower first.”_

The parts separate in his head, pieces of a puzzle, the could bes and the what ifs. He jumps. The rush of air stings his face. The water is oddly warm. His head hurts but he makes it to the top of the stairs, clawing and digging into the dirt and the stone, his nail bending and breaking, too far back and it bleeds.

_“You cut your hair.”_

_He frowned and pointed at her._

_“No, I didn’t.”_

_He moved around the console, sliding on his sonic sunglasses._

_“Yes you did. It’s different.”_

_She folded her arms and twisted her lips._

_“No, I really didn’t. I would remember.”_

_His eyebrows lifted._

_“Would you?”_

She keeps asking him what and not why, but he wishes he could tell her something as simple as _I miss you_. Her hand on his cheek, even in his mind, is enough. He can remember her thumb sliding down, trailing along his jaw. It’s selfish, but there’s a comfort there, a welcomed break from what he suspects is endless repetition. He wants to linger here for as long as he can, but there is no time.

And yet, time is all the Doctor has.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a smell to the diner he can’t place.

The vinyl of the stool squeaks when he sits, the heels of his boots clinking against the bar beneath it. The waitress smiles but her eyes are too soft, too wide, like she’s happy and sad at the same time.

He’s been here before.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She knows what he’s going to do before he does it. She always has, really. They are too alike.

Her fingers press against her wrist, hard, but there is nothing. She can’t feel it, can’t hear it. She is dead. And yet not.

For now.

She grins across the console, pulls the lever, and holds on tight.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He would know, he thinks. He would know if it was her, _when_ it’s her.

The chords, those are familiar, like a well-worn memory. His fingers remember, even if he does not, the calluses, the worn down nail of his right index finger.

She smiles at him again. A lock of her brown hair falls in her brown eyes. Her uniform is too blue.

He plucks at the strings.

It doesn’t make any sense.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Clara’s fingers trail over the brick.

Music follows them, the sounds of celebration drifting out from the square. They won today, and the sky is no longer falling. His hand is in hers, too comfortable, too tight, letting her lead him where she will.

The doors fall open, the cooler air of the TARDIS a welcome relief from the sticky heat of a tropical island. She laughs and stumbles inside, catching herself on the railing before she bounds up the stairs. He follows after her, presses close to her as she leans back against the console. His mouth slides over hers, greedy and wet, and she arches into him.

There is no right moment for this, for them, but she’s stopped counting.

Her teeth graze his skin as she sucks on his bottom lip. A sound spills from the back of his throat, deep and low, and she shivers. His hands drop to her sides, over her hips and underneath her shirt to her skin. There’s a noise again from his mouth into hers, and they’re moving too fast for the moment. What she wants is beyond the simplistic idea of memory. She wants touch and feeling, him imprinted on her skin and burned into her mind.

She pushes his coat back until it slides and hangs awkwardly off his arms. He lets go only for as long as it takes to let it drop to the floor, and then his hands are at her waist, urging her up to sit on the edge of the console. She moans as he buries his mouth against her throat, saying her name between touches of his teeth and tongue.

Her fingers tremble as she tugs her skirt up and her knickers down, shift forward and spreading her legs for him to stand between. There’s no teasing or patience, and then he’s inside her and her whole body starts to hum. He thrusts forward with a grunt, and her legs hook around his hips, begging him to move again until sensation swallows her.

There are things she wants to say, more like promises than anything else, but it’s too much to think about right now. He moves just the right way, her hand smashing a set of buttons, hip digging into a lever, and she arches back hard, crying out and biting her lip. When it ends, he says her name, and she clenches around him as her mouth hangs open. He grunts into her throat. She sighs, her heels slipping down to the back of his legs, and they slump against each other in a mess of limbs.

She pants over his skin, licking the sweat from her lips, and for a moment the air in her lungs feels unnecessary.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a bird, a raven.

It stares at her like an omen, like her past coming to catch up with her. It caws loud and sharp, the sound stabbing her ears. She winces and looks the other way.

She steps out into the street, willingly, boldly.

She stands there on an empty street, the sky a strange hazy gray. It feels right this time, proper, with the Doctor at her back like always.

The raven comes at her, beak open, talons forward, calling out her last moment. She stands there, arms flung wide, waiting.

The raven passes.

Clara Oswald turns to smoke.

 

 

* * *

 

 

She just barely holds back saying his name.

“Is this a story, or did this really happen?” she asks.

It’s a test.

He knows this somehow.

“Everything ever told really happened,” he says. “Stories are where memories go when they're forgotten.”

He hasn’t forgotten. Not yet. He would know, will know.

She smiles and shakes her head, her elbows on the counter. He strums the same set of chords again, and she can feel the music vibrate through her body, her heart.

That is what she is now. A story.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s not your fault,” she says, smiling and shaking her head. A glob of mud flops off her ponytail and makes a wet plop on the floor. She pulls a face at it.

The Doctor scoffs and rolls his eyes, shaking out the wet sleeves of his hoodie. “No? That’s not what you usually say.”

Her fingers curl around his wrist and tug gently. She bites her lip and grins, and he knows what that means. His smile is positively wolfish.

It’s her turn to roll her eyes. “Come on. Shower first.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

She ends like she starts.

On a wisp of smoke, curling up into the air. The wind blows and carries her off.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I remember, you know,” he says. “All four and a half _billion_ years.”

It’s the diner again. Later.

 _Much_ later.

She smiles and leans forward, her elbows on the counter. “Really?”

The corner of his mouth curves, but he only looks at the strings and his fingers. The chords are still the same. He hums an affirmative and plays them again.

Clara looks away, out the window into the dust and sun. They can share this at least, another moment. They are tied together with them it seems. It’s never enough, she thinks tiredly. But they do have their memories.

She sighs. “Me too.”


End file.
